POLICY AND PROGRAM STUDIES SERVICE

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1 POLICY AND PROGRAM STUDIES SERVICE National Evaluation of GEAR UP A Summary of the First Two Years 2003 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DOC # OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY

2 National Evaluation of GEAR UP A Summary of the First Two Years U.S. Department of Education Office of the Under Secretary Policy and Program Studies Service Westat Rockville, Md. 2003

3 This report was prepared for the U.S. Department of Education under Contract No. ED-99-CO-1039 by Westat. Dan Goldenberg served as the contracting officer s representative. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the Department of Education. No official endorsement by the Department of Education of any product, commodity, service or enterprise mentioned in this publication is intended or should be inferred. U.S. Department of Education Rod Paige Secretary Office of the Under Secretary Eugene W. Hickok Under Secretary Policy and Program Studies Service Alan L. Ginsburg Director April 2003 This report is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. While permission to reprint this publication is not necessary, the citation should be: U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Under Secretary, Policy and Program Studies Service, National Evaluation of GEAR UP A Summary of the First Two Years, Washington, D.C., To order copies of this report, write: ED Pubs Editorial Publications Center U. S. Department of Education P.O. Box 1398 Jessup, MD ; Via fax, dial (301) ; Or via electronic mail, send your request to: You may also call toll-free: ( ED-PUBS). If 877 service is not yet available in your area, call (1-800-USA-LEARN). Those who use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) or a teletypewriter (TTY), should call To order online, point your Internet browser to: This report is also available on the Department s Web site at: On request, this publication is available in alternate formats, such as Braille, large print, audiotape or computer diskette. For more information, please contact the Department s Alternate Format Center at (202) or (202)

4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank the many individuals whose efforts contributed to the preparation of this report. First, we would like to thank our consultant, Lana Muraskin, who summarized and synthesized two years of site visit reports and wrote the preliminary draft of this report. We also would like to express our gratitude to members of the Technical Working Group for valuable reviews of drafts of this report. They provided insightful comments and constructive recommendations for improvements. The members of the Technical Working Group include: Ann Coles, the Education Resources Institute; David Cordray, Institute for Public Policy Studies, Vanderbilt University; Mary Beth Curtis, Center for Special Education, Lesley College; John Gargani, I Have a Dream Foundation; Hector Garza, National Council for Community and Education Partnerships; Tom Kane, University of California-Los Angeles; Hayes Mizell, Program for Student Achievement, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation; Amaury Nora, University of Houston; Tracy Proctor, I Have a Dream, Southeast D.C.; Linda Shiller, Vermont Student Assistance Corporation. Similarly, we are appreciative of the staffs of our subcontractors, Branch Associates and Decision Information Resources, and the staff of Westat who conducted the site visits. They prepared the site visit reports and encouraged the schools and GEAR UP projects to provide the study data. Special thanks go to the GEAR UP projects, their staffs and the schools participating in the national evaluation. By helping with our many requests for data and hosting the site visit teams they have made this project and report possible. Finally, we would like to thank Kevin Cramer and Dan Goldenberg, project officers at the U.S. Department of Education, for their interest and guidance in this study and their comments on early drafts of this report. Linda A. LeBlanc Project Director Kim Standing Deputy Project Director Alexander Ratnofsky Vice President iii

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6 Contents Executive Summary... 1 The Federal Grants... 1 This Report... 2 What We Have Learned... 3 Part One: Partnership Grants... 5 The Students in GEAR UP and Their Parents... 5 Services Students Receive... 7 Supplemental Academic Support... 7 Guiding Students to College... 9 Intensity of Supplemental Services Services Parents Receive Support Schools Receive Administering GEAR UP Partnerships GEAR UP and the School Environment Part Two: State GEAR UP Projects Grants Where All or Most Services Are Administered by State Agencies Grants Where All or Most Services Are Conducted through Subgrants to Schools or Districts Endnotes List of Figures Figure 1. Racial and ethnic composition of GEAR UP students... 5 Figure 2. Comparison of GEAR UP and national participation rates in special programs... 6 v

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8 Executive Summary Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) is a federal program aimed at equalizing access to higher education for low-income students. GEAR UP was created in 1998 as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of As mandated by the legislation, GEAR UP grantees seek to increase postsecondary access and completion by promoting the following: Information to students and parents (e.g., appropriate information on college preparatory courses, cost of college attendance, financial assistance and different programs of study). Individualized academic and social support to students. Parent involvement in education. Educational excellence. School reform. Student participation in rigorous courses. To further these objectives, GEAR UP grantees are charged with establishing strong and lasting partnerships among school districts, colleges and other entities to operate the projects. In this report we look at the students being served by GEAR UP, the activities and services provided to these students and their parents, additional professional development opportunities for teachers and curriculum development efforts taking place in these schools. We summarize the growth and changes that occurred at the study sites during the first two years of their grants. The Federal Grants GEAR UP entered its third year of operation in fall The first grants were awarded in August 1999 to two types of recipients: (1) partnerships of school districts, colleges and other organizations (164 awards) and (2) state agencies (21 awards). In its first year, the program awarded $75 million in federal resources to partnership grantees and $42 million to state grantees. Additional grantees were added in 2000 and There are now 243 partnership grantees and 30 state grantees. A total of about $295 million was awarded in fiscal year (FY) 2001 to all GEAR UP grantees. Two-thirds of the federal funds were awarded to partnership grantees and the remaining one-third to state grantees. Partnership grants require recipients to begin providing services to students no later than seventh grade and to continue services to these students in participating high schools until graduation. This requirement means that, in most school districts in the program, middle schools have been the first schools to participate in GEAR UP. In all participating schools, at least 50 percent of the students must be lowincome (i.e., eligible for free or reduced-price lunches). Unlike other federal programs designed to increase college access that enroll students who meet specified criteria, GEAR UP partnership grantees must provide assistance to all students in designated grade levels in participating schools (called cohorts). The whole grade (or grade cohort) approach recognizes that in schools with high rates of family poverty, all students are at greater risk of poor academic performance and low rates of college attendance. 1 The GEAR UP approach of serving all students also allows services to be integrated into the school day and regular educational offerings, providing greater opportunities for academic assistance and education reform. 1

9 The federal resources provided through GEAR UP are relatively modest given the program s ambitious goals. In the first year of the program, the 164 partnerships served more than 100,000 students with an average per student expenditure of about $650 from federal resources. The maximum allowable federal allocation per student is $800. To extend the available resources, grantees are required to support at least 50 percent of the cost of operating their projects through cash and in-kind contributions. The remainder of this report will report on the federal share. In their second year, the same 164 grantees served just over 150,000 students, with an average per student expenditure of about $630. The 73 new partnership grantees added in 2000 served about 45,000 students at an average of approximately $760 per student. 2 These resources were used not only to provide student services but also to provide information and services to parents and to implement reforms (such as curriculum development, teacher professional development and other school reform efforts). State grantees operate under somewhat different rules from partnerships. A wide range of state agencies may administer state grants alone or in conjunction with other entities. State GEAR UP grants must offer both a college awareness and preparation component as well as college scholarships; at least 50 percent of the grant must be used for scholarships. Projects may provide services to cohorts of students (like partnerships), or they may focus on disadvantaged priority students in any grade. 3 They may also obtain waivers on the use of funds for scholarships until current GEAR UP participants reach college age. The average per student funding amount for state grants is lower than that reported by partnerships. In the second year of their grants, funded state grantees served more than 135,000 students at an average cost of about $370 in federal funds per student. State grantees receiving their first-year award in 2000 served about 29,000 students for less than $400 per student. This Report The legislation establishing GEAR UP mandated an evaluation of the program. This report is an early product of that evaluation. The report describes the program, as implemented, and sets the stage for later examination of GEAR UP s impact on high school performance and college participation. The report suggests hypotheses and issues about GEAR UP practices and student outcomes that can be pursued in the longitudinal study described below. We also identify implementation issues that have arisen as the program has developed that may warrant attention from program officials. Information on partnership and state grantees is reported separately. The study design. The evaluation is following a group of GEAR UP participants who entered the program in seventh grade during the school year. (We refer to this component of the evaluation as the longitudinal study. ) The students were selected from partnership projects that began operation in the first year of GEAR UP ( ) and indicated in late 1999 that they were fairly well along in implementation and that they planned to serve a new cohort of seventh-graders the following year. Approximately one-third of the first year partnership grantees were excluded because they planned to serve only one cohort over the life of their grants. From among the two-thirds planning to pickup a new cohort of seventh-graders in fall 2000, Westat selected 20 partnership grantees for the evaluation. Because the focus of this evaluation is on the effect of various approaches on student outcomes, Westat made every effort to include projects with applications that reflected different programmatic approaches and a mix of fiscal agents (i.e., school districts, colleges and universities). 4 We then simultaneously matched one middle school participating in each GEAR UP project with a middle school in the same or nearby school district with similar students but without GEAR UP for comparison purposes. 2

10 Because the students who are being followed in the national evaluation are still enrolled in middle school, student outcomes such as enrollment in college preparatory courses, high school completion and college attendance will not be known for several more years. Nonetheless, some information is available now about the first two years of GEAR UP from all GEAR UP projects and from the projects and schools participating in the evaluation. This information forms the basis for the current report and includes the following: Background information on participating students and their parents. Westat collected data from 18 schools through student and parent surveys as well as records of students and parents GEAR UP participation. Descriptive information from site visits to the 20 partnerships conducted during each of the first two years of GEAR UP that explored the nature and status of GEAR UP. 5 During those visits, Westat asked project, district, and school personnel about the design and approach of the GEAR UP project, the partnerships, program administration, the activities that had been undertaken or were planned, the project staffing, and role of the project in reform at the school. Site visitors asked project directors what activities were underway to enable comparable efforts to continue after the end of the grant. Site visitors also conducted group interviews with students, parents, and teachers. Staff made similar visits to seven state grantees as well. Information from the 2001 GEAR UP Annual Performance Reports (APRs). The APR provides aggregate data on all GEAR UP projects. All GEAR UP grantees submitted their first APR designed specifically for the program in May What We Have Learned Student Characteristics: In the second year of operation ( ), there were 237 GEAR UP partnerships serving nearly 200,000 students, 90 percent of whom were in the seventh or eighth grade. GEAR UP students were predominately minority 36 percent were Hispanic, 30 percent African American, 26 percent were white, 5 percent Native American and Hawaiian and 3 percent Asian. School Characteristics and Climate: As required by law, all schools participating in GEAR UP had free or reduced-price lunch eligibility rates of 50 percent or higher, with a median rate of 67 percent. Several of the 20 middle schools visited as part of the study were facing serious education problems poor academic performance, high staff turnover and low morale. Initially, this led to resistance to GEAR UP in those schools because it was thought by some that the program might dilute their school s focus on improving academics and test scores. However, by the second site visit in spring 2001, school staff perceptions of GEAR UP had improved markedly, with GEAR UP being seen as a positive force for academic improvement. Administering GEAR UP Partnerships: On average between and , GEAR UP partnerships received federal grants of $713,000 or about $660 per student. Most of the federal funds are used for staffing. A typical project has a full-time director and possibly one other full-time staff member who are centrally located. In addition, these projects generally have full-time site coordinators and some part-time assistants at each participating middle school. Many projects had planned on having fairly elaborate decision-making processes and involving numerous community partners. In reality, GEAR UP partners rely heavily on project staff (e.g., project directors and coordinators) to plan and carry out project 3

11 operations. Most of the partners have been education providers. Two other areas where grantees original designs have been difficult to implement are involvement of parents and volunteers. The sites visited as part of the evaluation study indicated they had a great deal of difficulty in getting parents involved in GEAR UP activities. A few sites reported success with institutes that enrolled parents in 9- to 10-week workshops or with extensive outreach efforts, individual meetings and home visits. Sites also had trouble recruiting volunteers in the numbers they originally intended and ended up making more use of paid professional staff to provide services. GEAR UP Services: Projects can be grouped in two major categories based on the services they provide. Some projects focus on instructional or other efforts that affect the regular operation of the school; others focus on the provision of supplemental services to students. One of the sites visited is engaged in a major curriculum reform effort with a few others having components that augment regular instruction. Most of the other projects focused on providing a variety of supplemental services to students: Tutoring was the most common service offered across sites during years one and two. For budgetary reasons, many projects planned on using volunteers to provide much of the tutoring but, as discussed above, ended up relying much more heavily on paid professional staff, often teachers at the school, to provide tutoring services. It could be argued that this was actually a fortunate occurrence because studies have indicated that effective tutoring requires high dosages, experienced tutors and curriculum alignment all of which are more likely to occur with paid staff as opposed to volunteers working sporadically. Projects significantly reduced planned mentoring activities, on the other hand, due to the lack of volunteers. Projects also had difficulty attracting students to tutoring during out-of-school hours due to transportation difficulties and competing interests. College-planning activities college fairs, visits to colleges, etc. occurred at almost all projects and tended to be well-received by students. Projects also held a number of voluntary special events to help broaden the horizons of students. Besides providing general college and career information to students, one-third of the sites visited also provided individual guidance to all students or all students having academic or behavioral difficulties. Ambitious summer programs were offered by many projects at the end of their first year but it proved difficult to attract students in the expected numbers. Some projects scaled back their summer plans in the second year (summer 2001) in terms of length and expected number of participants. Professional development activities increased significantly between years one and two as teachers became more accepting of GEAR UP. Focus groups indicated that teachers were generally satisfied with the professional development opportunities that GEAR UP provided. State Projects: Four of the seven states visited as part of the study administered GEAR UP services directly from the state agency where the grant was housed. The remaining three states awarded subgrants to schools or districts in the states to operate GEAR UP projects. 4

12 Part One: Partnership Grants The Students in GEAR UP and Their Parents A profile of participants. Each GEAR UP partnership is composed of one or more colleges or universities, one or more school districts, and at least two other organizations, agencies or businesses. According to the APRs submitted by all grantees, in the second year of GEAR UP ( ), 237 GEAR UP partnerships were serving almost 200,000 students, with nearly 90 percent of the students enrolled in seventh or eighth grades. These students were evenly divided by gender and were predominately members of minority groups. Hispanics were the largest group served (36 percent), followed by African American students (30 percent) and white students (26 percent). Native Americans and Hawaiians were approximately 5 percent of the participants, and Asians represented 3 percent. (See Figure 1.) Nineteen percent of the students in participating schools had Individualized Education Plans compared with a national estimate of 13 percent across all grades reported in Seventeen percent of the GEAR UP students were classified as limited English proficient (LEP) compared to 9 percent of students nationally, in all grades, in (See Figure 2.) Source: Annual Performance Reports Figure 1. Racial and ethnic composition of GEAR UP students. 5

13 The schools and students in the longitudinal study. 9 GEAR UP is aimed at increasing college attendance among low-income students. To ensure that the program reaches the intended beneficiaries, GEAR UP requires that 50 percent or more of the students at participating schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunches under the National School Lunch Program. In fact, many of the schools in GEAR UP have free or reduced-price lunch eligibility rates well in excess of 50 percent. The students in the national evaluation attend schools where the rates at which students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches start at 50 percent and rise to 95 percent, with an average rate of 66 percent. Nationally, 39 percent of students in were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. 10 Sources: National Evaluation of GEAR UP student record data; National Center for Education Statistics; and National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs. Figure 2. Comparison of GEAR UP and national participation rates in special programs. Schools that draw from communities with high rates of poverty often have high mobility rates as well. While some of the schools in the evaluation indicate relatively stable student populations, especially schools in rural areas, other schools report annual student turnover rates of 50 percent or greater. It may be the case that many students who start the seventh grade in a GEAR UP participating school do not finish seventh grade, or start the eighth grade, in the same school. 6

14 Student attitudes early in seventh grade. As they begin the seventh grade, many students in the GEAR UP schools and the matched comparison schools participating in the national evaluation of GEAR UP have similar plans regarding attending college. In a survey conducted by Westat prior to GEAR UP students receiving services, students indicated that attending college is very important to them (84 percent of the GEAR UP students versus 83 percent in the comparison group). However, fewer students in GEAR UP schools, compared to those in the comparison schools, indicated that they will definitely go to college (51 percent, GEAR UP; 56 percent, comparison). In addition, fewer students in both GEAR UP and comparison schools expect to enter college or a vocational school immediately after high school (44 percent, GEAR UP; 47 percent, comparison). College costs are seen as the main reason for not continuing with education among this low-income population, as cited by 42 percent of students at GEAR UP schools and 41 percent of students at comparison schools. Nonetheless, one-half of students in both schools expect to complete a college degree, and one-quarter anticipate a graduate or professional degree after high school. Parents of the study participants. More than one-half (58 percent, GEAR UP; 55 percent, comparison) of the students in this study come from families with household incomes below $30, However, despite their relatively low incomes and lack of college experience, the parents of students entering seventh grade have high hopes for their children s education. The survey of parents of seventh-grade students in the national evaluation of GEAR UP study found that most (87 percent, GEAR UP; 88 percent, comparison) think their children will get some postsecondary education, and 76 percent (74 percent, GEAR UP; 78 percent, comparison) think their children will earn at least a bachelor s degree. The majority of parents did not attend college themselves. Fifty-four percent of parents of students at GEAR UP schools and 51 percent of parents of students at comparison schools of parents did not receive any postsecondary education. Only 9 percent parents of students at GEAR UP schools and 12 percent of parents of students at comparison schools completed a bachelor s degree or higher. Services Students Receive The visits to the projects in the national evaluation provided descriptive information on the full range of activities and services undertaken as part of GEAR UP. In each of the projects, the site visitors documented what was occurring as part of GEAR UP describing the student and parent services, teacher professional development opportunities, curriculum development, other school reforms efforts and any other activities. This section of the report summarizes what we learned from the site visits about GEAR UP services and other activities in the sample of 20 schools. Supplemental Academic Support Academic support in the form of tutoring is the most common service in GEAR UP. Tutoring can take place both during the regular school day and during nonschool hours. It ranges from one-on-one or small group assistance to computer-assisted instruction (CAI) labs that offer students an opportunity to practice skills. Sometimes academic support is combined with other activities aimed at engaging students in learning and in promoting college, such as sports and clubs. The most common academic support during out-of-school hours is after-school tutoring. Several of the sampled projects offer Saturday academies that include tutoring and a few offer tutoring in the morning before the school day begins. Unfortunately, when tutoring and other services are provided outside of school hours, projects have difficulty attracting students. In focus group interviews, students say that their reasons for not attending activities include transportation problems and competition from other activities. Students also say that they are just too tired 7

15 after school. One or two projects in the evaluation require out-of-school tutoring prior to standardized testing for students at risk of poor performance. Academic support during school hours may focus on a specific course or on preparation for standardized tests more often than out-of-school support. A teacher may use a tutor in the classroom to work with individuals or small groups of students who need more assistance with a lesson. Whole classes or individual students needing additional help may use a GEAR UP-supported computer lab where they practice new skills. A few projects offer tutoring during lunch or study hall periods, when students can receive more individualized attention with homework or classwork. Only a couple of projects indicate that students are taken out of classes for tutoring, and none of the projects indicate pullout from a core course. When pullouts do occur, students are excused from physical education or elective classes. Across the projects in this evaluation, most academic support is provided to students who are having academic problems or who have performed poorly on standardized tests. Most projects do not have the staff needed to provide tutoring to all participants, although at least one project has tried to offer enrichment services to students who do not need tutoring. Teacher recommendations play a major role in deciding who receives academic support, both during school hours and out-of-school. In their original designs, many of the projects had planned to provide one-on-one tutoring to most or all students, much of it to be provided by college students or other volunteers from partner organizations or the community. The projects experienced considerable difficulty in finding these volunteers for a variety of reasons College schedules and middle school schedules conflict. College students do not have transportation to schools or cannot commit to sufficient volunteer hours. Many other programs compete for the same college and community volunteers. School districts have rules that constrain when tutoring may take place (e.g., limiting volunteer tutoring to school hours but not allowing pullouts from classes) or slow the process of recruitment (e.g., increasingly rigorous background checks). As a result, many projects are turning to paid tutors. Projects are hiring regular teachers to work before or after school or on Saturdays, using project staff as tutors, paying a limited number of college students who then work part-time (e.g., through college work-study) and using high-performing high school students who are paid a stipend. The move away from volunteers to paid tutors may have unplanned benefits. If studies are correct, volunteer tutors of the type originally envisioned may not have had much effect on student performance. 12 Studies of the determinants of effective tutoring state that three conditions must be present: training of tutors by experts, high dosages of tutoring and tutoring that follows class lesson plans. College students who commit to a small number of hours of GEAR UP tutoring during study halls, lunch periods or after school rarely receive expert training, have little contact with teachers or lessons and are unlikely to provide intensive assistance. Paid tutors, on the other hand, often meet the conditions identified for effective tutoring. Under GEAR UP, the training received by college and high school students who provide tutoring ranges from a single two-hour session to a college course that provides certification, but much of the training is limited to a few hours. A few projects use student teachers as tutors. The longitudinal evaluation of GEAR UP will provide an opportunity to look at the relative effectiveness of different providers of academic support, including teachers, GEAR UP staff (many of whom have 8

16 backgrounds in teaching, counseling or other helping professions), college students and high school students. The evaluation will also consider the effects of different environments (e.g., classrooms, Saturday academies and computer labs) and different approaches (e.g., small groups in classrooms, oneon-one homework help and CAI for standardized testing). Guiding Students to College The projects in the longitudinal study provide a variety of support services aimed at encouraging students to plan for college. Depending on the project, these services include career and college fairs at schools and colleges, mentoring, college visits, career and school guidance and special events. Career and college fairs take place in almost all projects. They occur most often at the middle schools and involve posters and information tables; visits and presentations from college officials, college students and business representatives (some of whom are project partners); special games; and other college-related activities. They may occur on a single day or may involve activities spread over a week or a month. Sometimes, GEAR UP operates these fairs independently, but more commonly they are jointly sponsored by GEAR UP and other programs (like School-to-Work). Fairs are generally schoolwide (or gradewide) events and, in that sense, are capable of affecting all the students in the GEAR UP cohorts (or grades) within a school. All of the projects in the longitudinal study held at least one college visit in the school year, and some organized multiple visits that year. Students who participated in the focus groups report that they enjoy the college visits a great deal and that they are considering college more seriously as a result of the visits. Several project staffs indicated that GEAR UP is responsible for starting college visits for seventhgrade students; before GEAR UP, such visits were not held or only eighth-graders were likely to visit colleges. In the first year of GEAR UP, when implementation was not complete in many projects, it was typical for all students in a grade to go on a single college visit, usually to a partner college for a half or a full school day. In the second year, there was more diversity in visits. In some projects, all students went on one visit, but selected, smaller groups of students went on additional college visits. Typically, these students are selected on a first-come, first-served basis, but sometimes participation is based on recommendations from teachers or others. We will have specific information about student participation in these activities and will know more about their effects on student behavior and attitudes in upcoming reports. About one-third of the sampled projects operate either an after-school or a Saturday program that combines tutoring or other academic assistance with career exploration, interest clubs or recreational activities. These programs are most commonly called clubs, after-school academies, or Saturday academies. After-school programs are typically held several times a week, and Saturday programs are held from once a month to every Saturday. Most are staffed by GEAR UP staff, paid teachers or social service professionals, although one is staffed by paid college students. Some of the programs are extensions of offerings available prior to GEAR UP (under 21st-Century Schools, Title I or other auspices). Typically, these programs are voluntary and sites reported generally low participation on a regular basis. As with tutoring, most of the GEAR UP projects in the longitudinal study planned to provide volunteer one-on-one mentoring to all participants, and, as with tutoring, the inability to find volunteers has led to reconsideration of that plan. Some projects have largely given up on providing one-on-one mentoring to students, or they provide mentors to only a small percentage of students who request them or are referred 9

17 by teachers or others. Other projects have redefined mentoring to mean periodic meetings of a college student or adult volunteer with a group of middle school students. Some project directors contend that tutoring has the effect of mentoring as well. One project is using teachers as mentors, with each teacher meeting with at least two students. This appears to be the only project in the study providing mentoring to a relatively large number of GEAR UP participants, but still, fewer than one-half of the students in the cohort are participating. If mentoring is defined as a caring, long-term (a year or more), one-on-one relationship between a student and an adult, it is not clear at this point that any of the projects in the longitudinal study offers, or will be able to offer, this service to more than a handful of students. If the sample size is large enough, the longitudinal study will offer an opportunity to observe whether the small percentage of participants who receive long-term mentoring show different outcomes from comparable students who do not receive this service. All GEAR UP projects in the longitudinal study provide college and career information to students, but almost one-third of the projects in the longitudinal study provide systematic individual student guidance to some or all students. In these projects, counseling is a major focus of service, with individual plans developed for all students or for all students having academic or behavioral difficulties. These plans are called student or career action plans, individual development plans or individual portfolios. In most of the projects that provide this service, students meet individually with GEAR UP counselors to develop the plans and may attend subsequent individual or small group sessions at least once a year. In one program, teachers receive special training and serve as facilitators in individual guidance meetings with students and parents. Projects reported that student plans are likely to include a list of the courses the student will need to prepare for college, the results of career interest discussions or inventories, course grades, scores on standardized tests and other data. In these projects, the GEAR UP counseling sessions may be the only one-on-one counseling the students receive, as most of the schools report that regular counselors do not have time for this level of one-on-one assistance, especially for seventh-graders. Special events. In addition to college trips and career fairs, many of the GEAR UP projects hold a variety of special events that are seen as opportunities to expand the horizons of program participants. Staff members of the projects and teachers speak about the limited experience most of the students have had, indicating that many have never traveled outside their neighborhoods or communities. Special events take the form of trips to performances, museums and places of employment to name a few. These special event trips are always voluntary. Only relatively small percentages of students in grade cohorts are likely to participate in any single event. A few projects have taken small numbers of students on trips to distant cities (including the nation s capital). These exceptional trips are usually a reward for special activity or behavior (e.g., participating in an essay contest). In one project, two eighth-grade students were selected to travel to Japan during the summer as part of a cultural exchange program. Projects appear to vary substantially in the numbers of special events they provide. Summer programs. Academic assistance and college preparation are merged in many of the GEAR UP summer offerings. In their first year, the GEAR UP partnership projects had plans for ambitious summer offerings. Projects that had only begun to offer student services in the second half of that year held summer programs that were considerably more intensive than their school year services. While some offered primarily remedial education, others provided enrichment programs that combined instruction in core subjects with trips, hands-on activities, cultural events and recreation. Services were offered at colleges, middle schools and community agencies and were planned for three or more weeks. Even though slots were limited, projects reported that most of the summer programs only attracted a limited number of students. One session that aimed for 125 students attracted 25 to 30. A program in a school with several hundred students enrolled 20 in its first summer program. Transportation was a major 10

18 problem in some projects, but even projects in which students could participate at a neighborhood school or community center did not attract as many students as planned. Notable exceptions included a 10-day residential program at a university and a one-week marine science institute operated by an existing partnership of colleges and universities. In both of these summer programs, GEAR UP students joined others attending programs that were not run by GEAR UP. Also successful in attracting students was a one-month summer camp operated in conjunction with a summer school (mandatory for some students). In spring 2001, when the second year site visits were conducted, the plans for summer 2001 called for less remedial instruction and fewer weeks of service. All but two of the projects were planning a summer program, but most programs were to be fewer than four weeks in length, focus on academics and offer field trips and other events. Enrichment activities were to be offered, especially in science and technology. All summer programs were to be voluntary, and projects had scaled back their expectations about the numbers of students who might attend based on the prior year s experience. Most expected relatively small numbers of students one-quarter to one-third of a grade cohort. A few projects had established eligibility criteria as well and were planning to enroll only students who had demonstrated good behavior during the school year or whose parents actively enrolled them in the session. Most projects planned to enroll students on a first-come, first-served basis, if oversubscribed. A few projects were planning parent activities in conjunction with the summer offerings for students, such as instruction in how to help students with their homework. Intensity of Supplemental Services Much of the GEAR UP intervention is supplemental. Therefore, how much service or contact with the project typical participants are likely to receive is an issue. The most intensive services, such as summer camps, are voluntary and used by only small number of participants. Even without considering who uses which services, we know that GEAR UP resources are limited. For those GEAR UP projects in the longitudinal study, the typical grant expends about $650 of their federal resources per student. 13 This does not include the matching funds they are required to secure. The combination of the following factors suggests that the amount of GEAR UP contact that a typical student experiences is likely to be modest. These factors are: The overall per participant dollar figure. The limited types of all participant services such as fairs and some college visits. The targeting of tutoring, which is the most common and intensive service. The voluntary nature of other more intensive services such as the summer programs. Studies of supplemental programs repeatedly have shown that program effectiveness is directly related to the amount of service students receive. 14 For this reason, the longitudinal study of GEAR UP is paying close attention to who receives each type of service (especially when participation is voluntary) as well as how much service each participant receives. The data also suggest that considerable variety is likely in the per-student contact hours both within and across projects. The variation in intensity of services is both intentional on the part of some projects and an unintentional result of individual projects designs in other cases. From the case studies, it appears that 11

19 the most common supplemental services offered to all students are relatively low-intensity ones, such as week-long career fairs or one-day college visits (although activities related to college visits may extend over longer periods). Most projects offer one career fair a year and one or two college visits for all participants. Tutoring, while far more intensive, is used by a subset of students with academic need. Project staff have indicated that the number of students participating in tutoring varies across projects from one-quarter to three-quarters. Almost one-third of the projects provide one-on-one guidance services to students with academic need. However, guidance counselors reported that contact hours per participant are relatively small ranging from less than one hour to about four or five hours a year, with sessions lasting from 30 minutes to one hour. Additionally, the guidance hours received under GEAR UP are not duplicative of counseling services already provided by schools because counselors reported insufficient time to meet with each seventh-grade student each year. In programs in which GEAR UP offers a course (such as a science or career class), the hours per enrollee are high but the percentage of a cohort enrolled in the course is often low. Projects report that only one-quarter of a cohort or less may be enrolled in these courses (such as a MESA or AVID class). 15 The same holds true for the summer programs. The summer programs are intensive, including full-day and even residential projects that last one to four weeks, but only one-quarter of the cohort or less may enroll. Only the projects that have a widespread effect on instruction, through reform of core curricula or extensive in-service to improve instruction, are likely to provide a service (i.e., instruction) that affects an entire cohort at a relatively intense level. As we will discuss in more detail later, one of the 20 projects in the longitudinal study is currently offering a new curriculum in a core academic subject that affects instruction for all students in a cohort. A few additional projects are embarked on reforms that may have an effect on curricula for all or may affect all students through policy changes in the future (e.g., by leading a district to mandate eighth-grade algebra for all students or by encouraging students to explore career choices and use instructional software programs). The GEAR UP program was specifically designed with enough flexibility to permit a project to develop models of service that fit the needs of their school and its students within the cohort structure. The varying intensities of services and differences in the services provided an opportunity to understand how projects served a cohort of students. Most GEAR UP projects planned their offerings so that some services were not intended to be provided to all students, especially remedial services. Further, resource limitations meant that participation in many widely reported GEAR UP services was limited, voluntary or both. Students and their parents elect to participate in services such as tutoring during nonschool hours, afterschool or Saturday programs, mentoring, optional college visits, special events, and the summer programs. Many of these services could not by offered to all students even if student and parent interest was there because projects do not have the capacity to provide them (i.e., the staff resources and funds). There is only one project among the 20 that, as a matter of policy, spends resources solely for those supplemental services that can be provided equally to all students and purchases only materials that can be used equally by all students. A second project provides enrichment services to all students who do not receive tutoring. In short, the design of services and the resource levels mean that most GEAR UP projects cannot provide the same services and service levels to everyone. These projects typically evaluate the students to determine their individual needs and how best to serve them. 12

20 Services Parents Receive Involving parents in GEAR UP. In addition to students, GEAR UP is charged with providing information on postsecondary education to parents as well as promoting parent involvement in education. The legislation calls for close contact with, and activities designed for, parents. Through the visits to the projects included in the longitudinal study, a preliminary picture emerged about the relationship between the GEAR UP projects and parents, as well as the status of parent services. With some notable exceptions, the projects are experiencing difficulty in engaging parents in activities. Staff members in more than one-half of the projects in the longitudinal study indicate that attracting parents to meetings and events is quite difficult. In addition to sending out newsletters and bulletins, projects have tried the following parent initiatives without much success in attracting large numbers of parents: Parent and child workshops on college awareness or helping children study. Parent components in Saturday programs. Parent meetings or nights. GED classes. Parent auxiliaries (boards, alliances, committees). Some project staff members have become frustrated with the lack of parent responsiveness, a viewpoint echoed by teachers in the same project schools, who attributed poor attendance to parents lack of concern with their children s education. Parents, in contrast, saw themselves as involved in, and concerned about, their children s education. About one-third of the projects we visited, reported that they are successfully reaching parents. Two types of approaches seem to work in those projects. Four of the projects enroll parents in parent institutes. In three of these projects, the institutes are operated by a contractor under a state GEAR UP grant. The fourth is operated as part of a citywide effort to empower parents. Typically, the institutes are 9- or 10-week workshops that provide parents with information and assistance to help their children prepare for college. Those operated by the contractor rely on the contractor to recruit parents. Instruction is offered in English and Spanish, and child care is provided. Parents graduate if they attend a certain percentage of sessions. All four projects involved in institutes report large enrollments and plans to hold more workshops next year. Two projects hold individual parent and child counseling sessions at school for all or most of a cohort, and staff in an additional two projects make large numbers of home visits (100 or more during the school year). In one case, the individual meetings with parents and their children are facilitated by specially trained teachers with 90 percent of parents attending. In the other projects, the parent sessions are operated by GEAR UP staff (including specialized community liaisons). Although clearly not mandatory for parents, all of the projects make strong efforts to impress upon parents how important these sessions are for their children s future. Both of these types of approaches require considerable effort (i.e., staff resources) to organize, recruit parents, schedule and run. The activities themselves give parents personal attention, provide inducements to come (real or perceived) or make it easy to participate. This is particularly true of the home visits. They 13

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